


the name of the game

by karples



Category: DCU (Comics), Grayson (Comics)
Genre: Drabble Sequence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 04:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7999333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karples/pseuds/karples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halfway over the Pacific Ocean, Dick kissed Tiger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the name of the game

**Author's Note:**

> takes place during grayson #16.
> 
> experimenting with the grayson characterizations! i'd originally planned for this to be longer, but i felt that this narrative style was hard to sustain, so here's most of what i have.

*

 

Halfway over the Pacific Ocean, Dick kissed Tiger, or Tiger kissed Dick. In retrospect it’s all jumbled up--like cards scattered from a new deck, you know? Humpty Dumpty. You could try to put it together, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Dick would know. Dick’s been cracked open and poured out and reshaped so many times, he’ll never be the same again. He’s still Dick Grayson, just not as he once was--a different iteration, permutation, whatever. It doesn’t matter. And anyway, Dick knows that they both wanted it.

They were cozied up in the pilot cabin of a jet, like the most secret layer of a nesting doll. Dick made small talk, and Tiger occasionally graced him with a reply. Between them percolated an untapped, latent pressure. Dick recognized it. All around them the motors whirred, and the great silky currents of wind churned, and over the noise, at the five hour mark, Dick heard Tiger say, “Grayson.”

Dick turned to find Tiger tracking his movements with his eyes. _Lovely_ eyes, lovely and grave and not exactly afraid. Anticipating, apprehensive. The vertiginous lurch before your grapple hook hit the next roof, or maybe Dick’s projecting. Maybe for Tiger it’s the index finger squeezing the trigger, safety off.

But all this fuss over a little kiss? Overkill. Dick’s kissed people, Dick’s kissed a lot of people. Dick hadn’t kissed Tiger... yet. So Dick uncurled his legs and hit the autopilot button and said, “What’s up, Tig?”

Tiger lifted two fingers. “One, do not call me ‘Tig.’ Two--”

Their gazes flicked to each other’s mouths. Dick’s traveled downward, over Tiger’s stubbled philtrum, the generous swell of his lower lip and his chin.

“Two,” Tiger repeated, quieter, marooned.

Dick swooped in for the belated rescue. His least graceful save, if not one of his most sincere. “There you see her,” he singsonged, “sittin’ there across the way...”

“Grayson, _what_ on...”

“...And you don’t know why, but you’re dyin’ to try, you wanna kiss the...”

Boom, baby, back in the airspace of normal. Music worked wonders. Tiger physically resisted an eyeroll, which made Dick break off and laugh, even though they were headed to New York. Dick had too much history in New York--not the point, not the point... and then Dick leaned forward, still laughing, and Tiger met him in the middle.

And then they kissed each other.

Dick closed his eyes, choosing to linger in the dark. Mapping out the scritch of Tiger’s beard, Tiger’s hand on his throat. Tiger’s breath on his tongue, Tiger’s shoulders under his palms.

“So what was that about?” Dick asked afterward, wishing for a good reason to keep his eyes closed.

“You talk too much,” said Tiger. A clumsy, transparent excuse, Dick could tell, even with his head drowsy and weightless. Typical after good kisses. Also typical: how he wanted to cut a hole into his chest, as resonant and cavernous as the Batcave, so that he could bury himself in it.

“I could’ve sworn you hated me,” Dick lied.

Tiger snorted. “That is a vast oversimplification, Agent 37.” The conversation deflated when Tiger turned off autopilot to occupy his hands, and an hour later they were _actually_ back to normal, bickering about methodology, planning for the future.

Dick knows that they both wanted the kiss. The question is why. The thing about people is that you never know, do you? The skin’s the first barrier of defense, and the closest anybody will ever get to another human being is behind that, behind the skin. Spies take that truth and twist it all up.

So Dick and Tiger kissed each other. So maybe, at least for Dick, it isn’t a little kiss at all.

 

*

 

They Airbnb an apartment in New York for two days and book a second for three, a third and fourth for one. It doesn’t matter if they’re in a motel or a hotel or an RV--Spyral will find them, or they'll find Spyral. They might as well be comfortable for the time being.

Their rental isn’t in the heart of the city, which doesn’t make a difference in terms of travel, because they’re _spies,_  Tiger, they don’t have to take the road! Tiger insists on a four-wheel drive anyway, and he makes a show of tucking the keys under his vest, right over his heart. Dick correctly concludes that Tiger’s in charge of the wheel.

That first night, Tiger claims first watch. Dick instinctively lies down with his back against the wall. His eyes skip from corner to corner to the curtained window, where a slender, flickering margin of light perforates the darkness. Cast by the faltering neon sign across the street: OP--N.

Tiger’s face is turned aside, and the distance between them feels like a vacuum. Tighter, more wordless than outer space, and Dick’s _been_ to outer space.

Dick stares and stares at where Tiger’s jaw disappears into shadow, where the crease of his lips ends, until the whole situation seems abstract and laughable. A giant cosmic joke.

Suddenly Dick knows that he has to put it all away, put everything away. He rolls over to face the wall and its redundant floral pattern.

“...What are you doing?” Tiger asks immediately.

“Trying to sleep,” Dick answers, almost annoyed. Then, to smooth it over: “Promise I’m not doing anything naughty where you can’t see me.”

“Sleeping like _that_?”

“Uh, yeah, this is called sleeping, Tiger. This is how people sleep. We lie down and count sheep.”

“You know what I mean.” Tiger’s voice is clouded with irritation, like that time Dick did a quadruple flip while diving from a burning helicopter. It was unnecessary, Dick knows, but there’s a bat and a wheel in the sky depending on his vapid spy wonder act.

A part of Dick yearns very badly to be simple and good and in love with simple things. Instead he gets Dick Grayson, live tragicomedy. The figurative and literal human pretzel.

Dick injects sweetness into his tone. “I trust you’ve got my best interests at heart, Tig. Including not stabbing me in the back.”

Tiger grunts. The curtain flutters; the line of light wavers.

“For now,” Tiger agrees.

“You can come and join me if you want,” Dick offers, semi-serious. “And then you’ll be one hundred percent sure I’m not doing anything.”

“I trust that you aren’t,” Tiger retorts. A beat. “Please do not, Grayson.”

Dick heaves a faux-dramatic sigh. “If you say so,” he says. He hopes that he can sleep without dreaming. He hopes that he’s got less to worry about. Honestly, he hopes that he doesn’t run into anyone he knows in New Work.

He hopes that he’s less hung up on that kiss.

 

*


End file.
